Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
1.3
0.6
Journals
Philosophies
Special Issues
Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language
share announcement

Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language

A special issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2024) | Viewed by 11828

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. David Macarthur

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Interests: contemporary pragmatism; liberal naturalism; skepticism; metaphysical quietism; philosophy of language; wittgenstein; philosophy of art

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In this Special Issue exploring the relationship between poetry and ordinary (hence, extraordinary) language, we have invited philosophers from diverse backgrounds, as well as poets who are also philosophers of poetry. Each approaches the question of the relation of poetry to ordinary language in a unique way. What poetry is and what ordinary language is—as well as what the ordinary world presupposed and pictured in ordinary language is—are all in question in these papers. Since I want to let each contributor speak for themselves, I will only provide the barest sketch of their contribution here.

Justin Clemens gives a close reading of a few lines of John Milton’s Lycidas concerning poetry and the ordinary. Sophie-Grace Chappell writes on the Oedipus complex and the way in which Oedipus is resistant to the extraordinary in Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus. Chappell is also including her new English translation of four of Horace’s Odes, which are an attempt to perform philosophy in poetry. Max Deutscher composes a response to Paul Celan on speeches about poetry. Julian Lamb applies the ordinary language philosopher J. L. Austin’s notion of performative utterance to a passage from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. David Macarthur discusses poetry as a form of anti-skeptical philosophy, giving a close reading of Czeslaw Milosz’s Realism in which “realism” is understood as an attitude to the ordinary in contrast to, and contesting, “realism” as a metaphysical or epistemological doctrine. Paul Magee’s paper compares innovation in ordinary language with innovation in poetry and poetry criticism. David Musgrave explores the difference between what is said and what is shown in the poetry of W. H. Auden and Kenneth Goldsmith, pursuing the latter’s practice with a “found poem” in a versification of G. E. Moore’s “proof” of an external world in the face of skepticism. And Lucy Van writes about the beginning of a poem in a meditation on quotation and the questions about originality, difference, tradition, context, and improvisation it gives rise to.

Contributors

Justin Clemens is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Univesity of Melbourne.
Sophie Grace Chappell is Professor of Philosophy, Open University.
Max Deutscher is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University.
Julian Lamb is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong.
David Macarthur is Professor of Philosophy, University of Sydney.
David Musgrave is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Newcastle.
Paul Magee is Professor of Poetry, University of Canberra.
Lucy Van is Research Associate, University of Melbourne.

Prof. Dr. David Macarthur
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Philosophies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • poetry
  • philosophy
  • Plato

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (10 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Editorial

Jump to: Research, Other

3 pages, 137 KiB  
Editorial
Poetry and Ordinary Language: Introduction to the Special Issue
by David Macarthur
Philosophies 2025, 10(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10020028 - 20 Feb 2025
Viewed by 345
Abstract
Poetry is a creation of ordinary words put to extraordinary use [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)

Research

Jump to: Editorial, Other

5 pages, 128 KiB  
Communication
Horace: Odes: Four New Translations
by Sophie Grace Chappell
Philosophies 2024, 9(4), 123; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040123 - 13 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1044
Abstract
Carpe Diem (Horace and Odes 1.11) [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)

Other

Jump to: Editorial, Research

10 pages, 227 KiB  
Essay
Speeches on Poetry
by Max Deutscher
Philosophies 2024, 9(6), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9060170 - 6 Nov 2024
Viewed by 942
Abstract
Paul Celan’s ‘Speeches’ determine what poetry is and why we need it. He does not want ‘timeless’ poetry but still ‘lays claim to infinity’; he would ‘reach through time’. He neither refuses poetry as contrary to reason, nor elevates it as pure immediacy [...] Read more.
Paul Celan’s ‘Speeches’ determine what poetry is and why we need it. He does not want ‘timeless’ poetry but still ‘lays claim to infinity’; he would ‘reach through time’. He neither refuses poetry as contrary to reason, nor elevates it as pure immediacy of meaning. He questions the ambivalent attitudes towards art—as ‘artifice’ or as ‘profound’. Celan cuts into the loose fabric of such ordinary language to shape it. Those who trumpet ‘plain sense’ against such incisive art deface it as degenerate. Celan’s poetic language presents us as ‘of the earth’ and as ‘released from it’—Büchner’s Lenz seeks clarity in the silence of alpine light but falls into madness in his isolation. He is drawn towards the life of the villagers at the foot of the mountains. He perceives the warm household fires, but it is an illusion that he can be a part of that scene. Thus, Celan enquires into art’s intensity. It is at the risk of reciprocity that a reader entertains the language of a poem. Eliot’s old ‘shadow’ between ‘the idea and the reality’ now falls between the poet’s production and the reader’s reciprocation. The reader may need someone with a free hand to hold a lantern to the script. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
9 pages, 162 KiB  
Essay
‘Show Don’t Tell’: What Creative Writing Has to Teach Philosophy
by David Musgrave
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 150; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050150 - 26 Sep 2024
Viewed by 993
Abstract
Poetry and philosophy have had a close but uneasy relationship in the western tradition. Both share an eschewal of the discovery of novel facts, but are somewhat opposed in that discovery is a central aim of poetry, but not at all the aim [...] Read more.
Poetry and philosophy have had a close but uneasy relationship in the western tradition. Both share an eschewal of the discovery of novel facts, but are somewhat opposed in that discovery is a central aim of poetry, but not at all the aim of philosophy. Through a close reading of W.H. Auden’s ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ and a versification of part of G.E. Moore’s ‘A Defence of Common Sense’, I argue that what poetry shows corresponds, in a broadly symbolist sense, to Wittgenstein’s understanding of the miraculous nature of the world. In this regard, poetry can offer philosophy clarity, in the form of its tonal architecture, value, and ethics, and may also constitute a perspicuous representation. Poetry remains in a perpetual mode of potential, as well as being possessed of a vatic autonomy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
14 pages, 282 KiB  
Essay
Poetic Judgement in Everyday Speech
by Paul Magee
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 144; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050144 - 11 Sep 2024
Viewed by 1258
Abstract
Speaking is a highly conventional enterprise. But unusual usages are, nonetheless, frequently encountered. Some of these novelties fall flat, while others find favour, to the extent of entering common usage. He considered to say something will sound wrong to most native speakers, while [...] Read more.
Speaking is a highly conventional enterprise. But unusual usages are, nonetheless, frequently encountered. Some of these novelties fall flat, while others find favour, to the extent of entering common usage. He considered to say something will sound wrong to most native speakers, while The military disappeared her husband, which was more or less unsayable prior to the 1960s, has come to seem fine. Linguist Adelle E. Goldberg has recently argued that speakers display a remarkable openness to new words, phrases and even grammatical forms, when there is no current way of communicating whatever it is those novel strings serve to express. My paper exegetes Goldberg’s findings to illuminate the question of poetic judgement. It proposes that there is a strong parallel between how people judge linguistic innovation in everyday speaking, and the way poets and critics judge innovative poetic diction: in both cases there is a premium on what cannot otherwise be said. The paper proceeds to deepen the analogies between these two modes of judgement. It starts by linking the lack of rules for determining the acceptability of new words and phrases in everyday speaking with the indifference to prior rules associated with aesthetic judgement in Kant’s third critique, and apparent in the appraisals of many a contemporary poetry critic. It turns to consider the claim that what motivates the judgements under consideration is a preference in the human conceptual system for distinct symbols to have mutually exclusive meanings. A fourth section concerns what Construction Grammar, the broad field of Goldberg’s intervention, has to reveal about the conditions under which new words and phrases can take on meaning in the first place. This too has something to suggest about why we judge certain poetic efforts poor, others landed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
15 pages, 254 KiB  
Essay
“Yet Once More”: John Milton’s Lycidas as an Assault on the Ordinary
by Justin Clemens
Philosophies 2024, 9(4), 131; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040131 - 22 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1212
Abstract
This article examines a problematic of the ordinary as it emerges in the poetical theology of an early poem of John Milton. This poem, Lycidas, has captured the attention of every major critic from the 18th century to the present, who has [...] Read more.
This article examines a problematic of the ordinary as it emerges in the poetical theology of an early poem of John Milton. This poem, Lycidas, has captured the attention of every major critic from the 18th century to the present, who has minutely examined its odd formal and generic character, its peculiar mix of personal grief and political outrage, and its role in Milton’s own personal development at a particularly decisive moment in English history. Yet, despite this extensive interpretive history, ‘the ordinary’ has never become an extended object of critical analysis. This article accordingly seeks to uncover and examine the importance of a certain set of contemporaneous significations of the ordinary in Lycidas, which implicate the institutions of Church, state, and university in perhaps surprising ways. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
12 pages, 203 KiB  
Essay
Wittgenstein and Poetry: A Reading of Czeslaw Milosz’s “Realism”
by David Macarthur
Philosophies 2024, 9(4), 128; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040128 - 18 Aug 2024
Viewed by 978
Abstract
In this paper I hope to cast light on Wittgenstein enigmatic remark, “one should really only create philosophy poetically”. I discuss Wittgenstein’s ambition to overcome metaphysics by way of an appeal to ordinary language. For this purpose I contrast “realism” in philosophy [...] Read more.
In this paper I hope to cast light on Wittgenstein enigmatic remark, “one should really only create philosophy poetically”. I discuss Wittgenstein’s ambition to overcome metaphysics by way of an appeal to ordinary language. For this purpose I contrast “realism” in philosophy (i.e., metaphysical realism, particularly its modern scientific version) with “realism” in poetry. My theme is the capacity of poetry to provide a model for Wittgenstein’s resistance to the inhumanity unleashed in metaphysics—exemplified by two distinct forms of skepticism—which obliterates the ordinary world under the guise of discovering its true nature. The poem I shall use to illustrate the difficulty in maintaining our grip on reality, hence our grip on our humanity, is Czeslaw Milosz’s poem “Realism”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
10 pages, 236 KiB  
Essay
The Riddle of Oedipus
by Sophie Grace Chappell
Philosophies 2024, 9(4), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040126 - 15 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1265
Abstract
What is the riddle of Oedipus? This paper is an exploration of the philosophy involved in Sophocles’ famous play Oedipus Tyrannus. The play involves a riddler who becomes king, a man who is famously good at understanding what others find obscure, and yet [...] Read more.
What is the riddle of Oedipus? This paper is an exploration of the philosophy involved in Sophocles’ famous play Oedipus Tyrannus. The play involves a riddler who becomes king, a man who is famously good at understanding what others find obscure, and yet is unable to see it when he is confronted by an obvious set of uncomfortable truths about himself. As well as for Oedipus, the play poses a number of different riddles for us: in particular it is a study of responsibility and shame, and of deliberation and choice. Like any work of art, the play does not tell us what conclusions we should reach; but it does show us some questions that need asking, and indeed some riddles that we face. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
15 pages, 240 KiB  
Essay
The Take-Ative: Infelicity in Romeo and Juliet
by Julian Lamb
Philosophies 2024, 9(4), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040125 - 14 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1379
Abstract
There is a curious moment in the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Thinking she speaks in solitude, Juliet says, “Romeo, doff thy name, / And, for thy name, which is no part of thee, / Take all myself”. Emerging from the [...] Read more.
There is a curious moment in the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Thinking she speaks in solitude, Juliet says, “Romeo, doff thy name, / And, for thy name, which is no part of thee, / Take all myself”. Emerging from the shadows, Romeo replies, “I take thee at thy word” (Act 2, Scene 1, 92). Suddenly, Juliet’s utterance has seemingly become binding: because they have been overheard by Romeo, her words have become her word. But is Juliet truly bound by her words given that she did not know they were being overheard, let alone intend for them to be binding? Using J. L. Austin’s notion of the performative, I consider the nature and status of Juliet’s utterance, its influence on the remainder of the scene, and what insight it might afford into the play as a whole. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
10 pages, 222 KiB  
Essay
The Beginning of the Poem: The Epigraph
by Lucy Van
Philosophies 2024, 9(4), 121; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040121 - 11 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1228
Abstract
Theoretically, a poem can begin in any way. What does it mean that in practice, poems often begin in a particular way—that is, by returning to a fragment of some prior thing? We see this in the encore of John Milton’s opening to [...] Read more.
Theoretically, a poem can begin in any way. What does it mean that in practice, poems often begin in a particular way—that is, by returning to a fragment of some prior thing? We see this in the encore of John Milton’s opening to Lycidas (‘Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more’); differently, we see this in the widely used convention of the poetic epigraph (for instance, T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ begins with six lines from Dante’s Inferno). While there is an established model for understanding the beginning as an act that invokes poetic precedent, this paper seeks to expose the beginning’s logic of return to a broader sense of language that is beyond the remit of poetic tradition as such. With a focus on the epigraph, this paper thinks about the everyday existence of poems and about how this existence relates to ordinary language, asking, how do these different modes of language function together? How does ordinary language collude in the creation of poetry? In its enactment of the passage of language from one mode of existence to another, the beginning of a poem might offer some answers to these questions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-10
Back to TopTop